David Valadao has been a congressman only since January, but the 36-year-old Republican is already in a tough spot over immigration reform. More than half of the voters in his Central Valley district are Latino, and the work of immigrants - from scientists to farmworkers - touches every level of the agriculture industry that dominates the region.

Valadao's political predicament: The resident of Hanford (Kings County) is one of only two of the 15 Republican House members from California who explicitly support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It's a phrase that few Republicans anywhere are willing to utter for fear of being accused of wanting amnesty for those in the country illegally.

As the immigration battle kicks into high gear, House Democrats need to find about 20 Republicans like Valadao if any reform package is going to contain a pathway, which is the main stumbling block to passing immigration reform. The Democratic-controlled Senate has passed a measure that included one, but Republicans who control the House oppose it.

The search is proving to be hard even in California, where 19 percent of voters are Latino.

The Chronicle contacted every GOP House member from California. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, was the only other Republican to support a pathway. The rest are ignoring the results of a post-mortem that national GOP leaders released earlier this year on the party's failure to win the White House, in part because Latinos overwhelmingly supported President Obama. The GOP analysis suggested supporting a pathway.

Latino voting bloc

Labor unions, immigration activists and Democratic groups are seizing on this divide and have been pounding Republican House members with heavy Latino constituencies, such as Rep. Gary Miller, R-Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), by running radio ads on English- and Spanish-language radio and TV.

Immigration activists have been visiting the offices of California Republicans for the past couple of weeks in an attempt to show the House members that they risk alienating the fast-growing Latino voting bloc if they don't support a pathway.

Miller's 2014 re-election race is rated a "toss-up" by the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. One of his potential Democratic opponents, Pete Aguilar, out-raised him in the most recent campaign fundraising reports, which were released last week.

Republicans "have come a long way," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, who has been involved in immigrants' rights issues for two decades and whose group has been lobbying GOP members in California. "They used to not talk to us at all. But there's still a long way to go."

A national survey released Thursday by the polling firm Latino Decisions found that 58 percent of the Latino voters surveyed would be "angry" if the House passed a bill without a pathway included. A Public Policy Poll taken in seven swing Republican House Districts nationwide earlier this month showed that at least 42 percent of all voters would be "less likely" to vote for Valadao, Miller and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock. Two-thirds of voters in those three districts support the Senate measure.

Personal issue

Valadao is about to take a larger leadership role on the issue. And he's going to do it in the district of one of the most powerful GOP members of the House.

On Saturday, Valadao appeared with House immigration rights leader Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., at a church in Bakersfield - in the neighboring district of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the third-ranking House Republican, who does not share their views on a pathway. Not publicly at least.

The issue is personal to Valadao. His parents were immigrants from the Azores islands of Portugal, and he still lives on a dairy farm. But few other Republicans share that background. More than two-thirds of House Republicans in the country represent districts where less than 10 percent of the population is Latino, according to the National Journal.

A key reason for Republicans' reticence, Valadao and Nunes said, is the phrase "pathway to citizenship." It has become toxic to Republicans - the political equivalent of supporting amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

But a pathway to citizenship isn't amnesty, Valadao and Nunes agree, at least as described in the bill that the Senate passed in June. That measure would allow undocumented immigrants to achieve citizenship in 13 years, provided they pay a fine, are not felons and achieve other milestones.

When Republicans met in a conference recently to discuss immigration, Valadao said, "people were kind of hinting around and mentioning it, but wouldn't say the words 'path to citizenship.' It's just a term that worries people because it's just a buzzword that people are afraid of," he said.

System must work

"There's no reason why such a route to citizenship shouldn't be on the table," Valadao said, adding that he thinks most immigrants in the U.S. illegally are law-abiding and want to work.

"If we have a good system in place," he said, "we'll be able to identify those people. Do all the background checks. We'll see that this is a guy who came across the border. He came across here to work, take care of his family. He's a good citizen, other than he came here illegally. We should have a system for him to go forward and be productive," Valadao said.

Nunes said he believes that "150 to 200 Republicans" in the House want to get something done on immigration - "as long as it works." While they may not be willing to admit it on the record, Nunes believes that nearly all of his California GOP House colleagues would be willing to support a pathway as long as "nobody jumps to the front of the line."

"It's the rhetoric now that is holding people back," Nunes said.

Political calculation

Others may be making a political calculation, that while there are growing numbers of Latinos in California, only a fraction of them vote. While Latinos made up 19 percent of California's population in 1980, they only became that percentage of its voters last year. Most of them are voting for Democrats.

"Some Republicans may think it is worse to alienate part of their base," which doesn't support a pathway to citizenship, than to court Latino voters, said Paul Mitchell, a political consultant with Political Data Inc., and an expert on the state's demographics and redistricting.

Some Republicans say they support immigration reform but describe it in a different way.

A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), said he "believes neither blanket amnesty nor blanket deportation is the solution. Those who demonstrate the ability to contribute to our society in a meaningful way should have a path forward to guide them, be placed at the end of the legal immigration line, meet the strict standards established and face a rigorous but fair application process."

Miller isn't talking

Miller, the San Bernardino County congressman, is taking pains to avoid the topic. He has represented parts of Southern California since 1998 and has long opposed a pathway to citizenship.

But recently he removed from his website several videos, including some of his more hard-line comments on immigration. On the issues section of his website, immigration is not among the 12 listed.

Since January, more than 30 groups and hundreds of individuals have visited Miller's offices to discuss immigration, a spokesman said.

In one of the video clips removed from his website, Miller said: "How do you justify having 15 million people unemployed in this country and having 8 million illegals in this country taking those jobs. It just doesn't work."

Miller made the comment during an April 2010 appearance on the Fox News program "Fox and Friends." The person Miller was debating on the other side of the screen: Democrat Gutierrez, who appeared with Valadao on Saturday in Bakersfield.